A 14-year-old schoolgirl reportedly shot dead a classmate and injured five people before killing herself at a secondary school in the Russian city of Bryansk near the Ukraine border on Thursday.
School shootings are uncommon in Russia, which has strong firearms prohibitions, but fatal attacks on educational institutions have become more common in recent years.
Following prior attacks, the Kremlin and officials in Moscow have expressed rising worry, with President Vladimir Putin blaming the incidents on a US import.
“A 14-year-old schoolgirl brought a pump-action shotgun to school, which she used to shoot her classmates,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.
“As a result, two people died—one of them the shooter—and there are five wounded,” it added.
Students videotaped and uploaded footage of barricading themselves inside a classroom, stacking tables against a door.
Authorities claimed the schoolgirl’s reasons, as well as how she obtained the weapon, were still being investigated, with the local governor calling the incident a “tragedy.”
At the time of filing this report, authorities did not name the shooter but said her victim was a female classmate.
Bryansk’s Gymnasium Number Five, a secondary school on the city’s outskirts, was the site of the shooting.
“The motives behind the crime and all the circumstances are being established,” the Instigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said.
According to Russian news outlets, the schoolgirl’s father was detained for interrogation, and the family’s residence was inspected.
Speaking on the incident, Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of the Bryansk area, called the shooting a “terrible tragedy.”
He noted that the five injured were minors who were transferred to a nearby children’s hospital.
“Two of them have light injuries. Three others have medium ones,” he said.
“My sincere condolences to the parents of the schoolgirl who died at the hands of the girl shooter. This is an irreparable loss,” he said.
Bogomaz noted that her family and the families of the injured will be given “all necessary assistance.”
Bryansk is a 370,000-person city in southwest Russia.
Since the summer, the border Bryansk region, including Bryansk itself, has been subjected to continuous Ukrainian drone assaults and shelling.
Since sending soldiers to Ukraine, Russia has carefully regulated its education system, emphasizing patriotism and teaching youngsters about its Ukraine offensive.
Following a succession of school shootings between 2019 and 2021, it has additionally tightened its already stringent gun ownership rules.
In September of last year, a shooter killed 18 people at a school in the western Russian city of Izhevsk.
In 2021, a 19-year-old shooter at a school in Kazan, Tatarstan, killed nine people. The same year, a teenager murdered six people at a university in Perm, Urals.
